just got lectured from the cable girl

I was trying to cancel my cable here, and I just got in an argument with this lady over who my childhood hero was!!! She would not let me cancel my account unless I answered her "security question". She was like - who was your childhood hero??? I was like I dunno, I did not have one. She said well you cannot cancel your account unless you provide the security question. You answered it before. Just guess! I said, well, I guess my sister?
She was like - uh, no, oh noooo girl............that is not a hero!!! A hero is...........
I never guessed it, and she told me she could not cancel my account until I did.
OMG! Again!
(no worries - I bypassed her quickly.)
Seriously not sure if I should laugh or be irritated. I guess Ms Cable Thing thought I needed a literary lesson on the classification of heroes - guess someone forgot to tell her there are all sorts of heroes in the world.

I could write a book just on the tribulations and quandaries of moving.

I could write a book just on the tribulations and quandaries of moving.

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That's hysterical! Hahah, I guess she doesn't like her family much!

Please don't write a book. Just hearing about your troubles makes my stomach knot. God, I hate moving! Luckily, it looks like we're going to be able to afford our place with only 3 people, instead of the usual 4, for the next year, so I won't have to move come July 1st. WHEW.

Recently I had my cable provider ask for the answer to my security question. She seemed shocked that I didn't even know the question.
THEN, the question was "What is your dog's name?" Simple question but I've had the same service for lots of years. When I asked "Which Dog??" she didn't think it was funny. Finally I replied my dog 15 years ago was x, our dog 8 years ago was Y and our last dog was Z. One of them has to be "the answer".

Mutt, I know it is not politically correct but it drives me NUTS when a service representative reads from a script to sound as though English is the language
of origin. I totally hate to hear in a stilted form "I will make every effort to help you with the problem you describe." They should at least write the format in "regular 2009 language" preferably with a disclaimer. I would like to hear "Hi (reading my name off their info sheet) my name is Kmlehji'lkj and I know how to help. You can call me K. I am not an American but I am very smart and can solve your problem. Let's do it! OK?"

I agree - the service industry in this world is unbelievable. I have talked to so many people this week to get this thing or another connected or disconnected and several of them I just hung up on because I could not understand them.

Star, I seriously think I should have just gone, "snip". There I disconnected myself, YOU figure out who my super hero is.

Hero could have been a sub. My cousins couldn't stop laughing when they first came to Maine and the sub shops were advertising specials on "hot italians". I can never remember my security question, lately I chose the name of my first pet, how can I forget that!

Steely, it sounds like at some stage someone asked you that question and recorded your answer for future use as a security check. But if they didn't TELL you at the time, then of course you're not going to remember. It makes sense to have a different sort of security question from "What is your mother's maiden name?"

Of course, if YOU are the one who wants something from THEM, then it doesn't work to just blow them off and hang up. But what you CAN do, is say, "Do we have any other quesrtions you could ask, ones which I might remember having arranged beforehand as genuine security checks?"

And if at any time the genuine security question is, "Who is your hero?" then remember, the customer is always right. Your hero can be whoever you want it to be!

My bank has these various security questions set up to ask me if I log in from a different computer, if I go too long without logging in or if I reset my cookies. I suppose this is a good thing. Problem is there are about 5 or so questions that I set up answers to. Thankfully my hero isnt one of them. The real problem is that while they are fairly normal like mothers maiden name and home town, I can never remember exactly how I typed things in. Did I type in Richmond VA or Richmond, VA? Or was it richmond va or richmond, va? Or richmond, VA. Ugh. And god forbid how did I spell Good Shepherd? Or did I use Good Shepherd or was it Stoney Point? ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Wow, Janet, your bank lets you log in from the same computer with-o these inane questions? I get them EVERY time I log in. And no matter what you are doing you cannot be logged in for more than4 minutes. That is it. Every 4 minutes you have to log in and answer a different security question. It is one reason I don't use their online bill paying system. You can't get the confirmation number back in that amt of time!

I would have had a COW if some clerk lectured ME on the appropriateness of my flippin' HERO!!!! Not ONLY would she have heard a piece of my mind (and I DO have enough to share!) I would then have contacted her supervisor and THEN have lodged a complaint with the CEO of the company's office (if you look them up on Hoover's database of business info you can get the corporate phone # and the CEO or president's name.

It is your hero, why does it matter to her if it is your sister or your third cousin's second uncles idiot nephew's dog????? Or a sandwich?? As long as it is your answer it is none of their business to judge it as appropriateness.

What is the deal with entry level people weighing in on the "appropriateness" of these things??? I have been getting all sorts of grief from teh receptionist at one doctor's office and from the insurance company. And NOT over insurance things or doctor office things. over things like the security question and how come i keep calling about my lab tests. Gee, because I want the results? because no one returned my call??

Customer service has gone way downhill lately. At least that is what I have experienced.

I absolutely hate passwords and log-ins! I have FIVE different programs at work that require both log-ins and passwords (and one that requires that you answer two questions) before you can get in to them. And the passwords and log-ins are only good for just so long and then you have to change them. I try to keep them the same so I can remember, but they run out at different times. I've been through kids' names, dogs' names, and just about every baseball player in the National League! A real pain in the butt! And on some, if you let them run out, you have to contact someone in another city to reset it - maybe they'll do it tomorrow ... or next week. Meanwhile, I can't get in to the program to do my work!

And it's no better at home! I've got at last a half-dozen things that ask for passwords and log-ins. My bank isn't too bad though. When you first set up online banking you have a log-in that is easy to remember and never changes. Then you select a picture out of thousands that they have, and make up a word or phrase that never changes. When you log in, this picture and phrase will come up, and if it's right, then you go ahead and log in with a password that you only change every six months or so. That's the EASY one!

Just a suggestion here, maybe I'm a bit paranoid about security, but I would suggest we not give examples of the sort of thing we're using as passwords. husband did a private demonstration to one of our online friends before Christmas, we PM'd the results to her, but he "white-hatted" her purely from data available online. And this was someone who claimed to be secure, to not release any personal identifying data online. If she had hinted even to this extent at what she used for passwords, we could have hacked a great deal deeper. As it was, we scared her a great deal because we got her name, her kids' names, her address, a lot of other information. If there had been a Google Earth photo of her house, we'd have been literally peering in her living room window, from the other side of the world.

And we're white hats. You don't want a black hat on your tail, and unfortunately a lot of us are at risk of this, purely due to the problems having a difficult child exposes us to. I know I have ex-teachers of difficult child 3's tracking whatever I write in my name because they know how unimpressed with them I have been. There are a lot of people who know enough about me, to be able to work out what my passwords are likely to be if I give out the slightest hint.

What I will say on the topic of passwords - this is fairly general, but if you have a set of common questions and your responses, on a text file somewhere or better still as a printout, it is fairly easy to give yourself a hint as to your answer, a hint that only you would know the answer to. For example, if the identifying question is, "What is the name of the dog you had as a child?" and you had about six dogs, your hint could be, "the one with a black nose." Most good identifiers will ask you for such a hint, if you have your own list of possible questions and hints prepared ahead of time, it can make it easier for you to keep track of them, to remember them and to have different ones for different account and purposes (which will help boost your security). Having the same password for everything is very risky - if a black hat discovers your password you can not only find your bank accounts emptied, but your entire identity stolen. It's one thing to be cleaned out, but to be cleaned out and with a criminal record not of your own doing, would be a huge shock.

Marg...I gave generic questions that they ask on most websites. Not the answers that I give. My passwords are a great deal more difficult and I use different "type" passwords for different type sites. The passwords I hate though are the ones which tell me I HAVE to have so many letters and combo's of numbers and letters. That tends to mess me up...lol.